Kingdom (39 page)

Tiber City
November 2015

T
he last thing Dylan could remember was being with Meghan at the Gas-n-Go, ripping out the pages of his father’s journal and tossing them into the flame. Everything after that was a series of half-conscious sensations: grays and blacks and there might have been a helicopter; there might have been larger aircraft, engines firing up and the shake and rattle as a jet blasted down a runway—there was transportation, movement of some kind, but Dylan was drifting in and out of consciousness so observational precision was out of the question.

And then the machines came—monsters of steel and industrial plastics and sightless scanners that hovered over him, inches from his face, moving across his body with inhuman patience. Conveyor belts fed him into claustrophobia-inducing plastic tubes that shook and whirred; he woke up screaming on more than one occasion, with thick black wires running from the back of his skull that he was too afraid to pull out.

He was in some kind of research facility, maybe a hospital, maybe something military—there were guards with guns and the sounds of boots echoing down hallways.

At some point an old man began to appear, sitting beside Dylan while the machines swirled around them, robotic arms hovering, grasping, whirling
through the over-conditioned air, the sensation of automated movement always present on Dylan’s peripheral. The old man, who said his name was Campbell, was accompanied by the smell of whiskey that would slice through the hallucinations. And then the old man would talk, his voice hoarse yet urgent, telling Dylan impossible things, crazy things—secret monastic orders and the truth about the human soul, about Dylan’s own soul, about the desert: the same things that were in his father’s journal. He saw the old man’s back, the tattoo that marked his flesh—the same symbol on the memory stick. Dylan didn’t respond, couldn’t respond; he could only squeeze his eyes shut, calling out for Meghan, rage consuming the pain, the fear, fueled by the realization that whatever was happening to him now, his father had suffered worse. In his lucid moments, he was even able to put a name to his tormentor: Morrison.

Then as suddenly as it began, it was over: the machines, the old man, the hallucinations—then nothing.

For the first time in a long time, there was light—real light—and even before he opened his eyes Dylan could feel it falling across his skin, across his face, disrupting the darkness. For a moment, Dylan lay motionless, his eyes pressed shut. He was naked under crisp, freshly laundered linen sheets; the air smelled clean but not fresh and there was a lingering hint of antiseptic. Mouthing the words he counted to 10, praying that when he opened his eyes he would be back in his own bed, in his own apartment; that somehow the past month would be nothing more than a very intense dream. When he reached 10, he said the number out loud, as if he were casting a spell. He listened to his heartbeat once, twice, before opening his eyes.

The world snapped into focus. Dylan screamed and shot out of the bed, stumbling across the pale, distressed wood floor, squinting as he took in his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of a large, sparsely decorated hotel suite: sharp, minimalist décor; high contrast whites, blacks, tans, browns; clean lines; 90-degree angles; a vague but undeniable vibe of transience, of flux, of suitcases and phone chargers and promises. The bed was pressed against the far wall and there was a bathroom a few paces from the bed, a behemoth of cold black marble sinks and floors and a transparent glass shower with a stainless steel showerhead. But there was no nightstand, no dresser; just a mounted flat screen television, a thin nonfunctional desk,
a single sliding-door closet, and a few open-face cubes attached to the wall: minimal storage space for the minimalist man.

The light that had woken him was filtering through the thin bamboo blinds pulled down over a massive sliding glass window, which consumed most of the wall behind the bed. The blinds looked sexy, they looked edgy; they helped advance the chic aesthetic sought by the designer. The blinds did not, however, block out the light and so Dylan was squinting as he searched for an opening in the blinds. His fingers wrapped around the smooth edge of the hyper-processed bamboo, but before he could yank open the blinds he was overcome with a strange certainty that beyond the window there would only be a massive desert. The hotel room seemed to recede, the walls and window dissolving, and for a single terrifying moment there was only a desert, one that seemed to stretch from the hotel window to infinity, miles of nothing—just rock and sand and a red sky and Dylan could even hear the crunch of earth under his boots, could feel the chill as the sun fell and the moon rose and predators began to stir. Then as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone and Dylan was pulling aside the blinds and where the desert had been, the Tiber City skyline now loomed.

“The fuck,” Dylan muttered, stepping back from the window. Tiber City was a big place, and although the landscape indicated he was in the Glimmer district, maybe somewhere near Chiba Street, there were over two dozen hotels in that part of the city and after awhile, they all looked the same. His frustration and fear were building, twisting around one another and he was reaching for the phone on the desk but it was dead. He ripped it off the desk and fired it at the window, hoping the glass would shatter and that someone in the street below would notice the shards raining down and come investigate. But the window held, and the phone crashed to the floor.

And that’s when he saw it: There was something hanging in the closet. His eyes were still adjusting to the light and as he moved toward the closet he was convinced that a body was hanging from the ceiling; in the low light anything was possible and he saw a swollen rotting corpse, festering with flies, but as he inched closer, unable to swallow, his heart heaving in his chest, he realized that was no body: just a suit dangling from a hanger. And at first Dylan was relieved, more than relieved, actually, because now he wouldn’t have to wander around naked asking for help, a scenario that seemed likely to end up with him being put in a hospital, maybe a rest home like Springwood. In fact, whoever left the suit had also been kind enough to leave matching
shoes and a menagerie of toiletries—a lovely added bonus because the inside of his mouth tasted like someone had mistaken his throat for a garbage chute and every time he swallowed he tasted hospital. He had a beard and there were little gray sticky patches all over his body, as if something had been attached and removed, attached and removed, over and over. The vein inside his right arm was swollen; the skin around it littered with track marks.

The idea of showering, of cleaning himself and getting dressed, was so appealing that at first, Dylan didn’t pay much attention to the suit itself; it wasn’t until he was laying the suit out on the rumpled bed that he realized it was the same suit he had recently worn to his birthday party—his father’s old suit. After that, things went a little fuzzy: He remembered shaving, remembered the hot water blasting his skin until it radiated pink, as if enough pressure and heat could wash away the past, uncover the future; putting on his father’s old suit in front of a full-length mirror, his fingers trembling as he fumbled with buttons and zippers; hallways and elevators and smiling staff. There was an address written on a piece of paper that Dylan found in the jacket pocket, an empty book of matches. At some point he realized he was standing in the lobby of the Hotel Yorick. And that’s when he started to scream.

Dylan was sitting in the back of what he thought was an H4, or maybe an H5—whatever the model or year a basic truth remained: This was a military weapon, a vehicle designed for urban combat and now it was being used to ferry Dylan across Tiber City. The idea was so absurd he just had to laugh and even though it was the fall, and it would soon be night—most of the sun had slunk below the horizon—the city was suffering through a massive heat wave and there was a voice on the radio whispering about animals being driven mad by the heat, tearing up their nests and devouring their young, and although there were conflicting reports on the matter, there were two things for certain: These beasts were coming to Tiber City and they were coming soon.

“Hey,” Dylan shouted at the driver, banging on the bulletproof partition dividing the front of the vehicle from the back. “You gonna tell me where we’re going?”

The driver didn’t reply but the voice on the radio seemed to get louder, the host’s voice rising, growing hysterical, addressing rumors of an underground
network of alchemists responsible for a banking crash, of a restaurant that had added human flesh to its menu, that entire streets in the Jungle district had begun to vanish, and it was all due to the heat wave but maybe there were other explanations and we can get to those after the break, the voice on the radio assured Dylan before the show cut out, replaced by an ad for gold coins, and Dylan was hitting the partition again, begging the driver to at least turn the fucking radio down but the guy just ignored him. Dylan couldn’t even remember what the driver looked like: After having slamming down two shots of whiskey in the bar of the Hotel Yorick, Dylan’s hands stopped trembling long enough to call the number on the card and whoever answered the phone—male voice, clipped, gruff, very official—had also ignored Dylan’s questions, cutting him off mid-spiel and announcing a Hummer would be parked outside the Yorick in seven to nine minutes and that if Dylan ever wanted to see Meghan Morrison alive again, he’d keep his mouth shut and get in the fucking car. That had gotten his attention.

Seven and a half minutes later, the car arrived. Dylan climbed in and that’s how he came to be in the back of an urban assault vehicle dressed in his dead father’s favorite suit, with no idea where he was being taken. All he knew was they were blasting down Chiba Street, the four-lane artery that pumped life, and death, into Tiber City’s Glimmer district and its mix of clubs and bars, bleeding-edge fashion boutiques and high-end electronics dealers, unmarked warehouses and sex clubs; all of which operated in the shadow of towering skyscrapers, home to multinational giants whose buildings often went nameless, identified only by a logo.

Outside the car, the very streets themselves seemed to be wilting under the heat; the lines outside the Chiba Street clubs listless, languid, and Dylan leaned back against the leather seats, the lights of the city still visible even after he closed his eyes. He thought about Meghan and he thought about his father; he thought about love and fear and the human soul. He tried not to think about beasts driven mad by the heat, rampaging across abandoned city streets. He replayed the video his father left for him on the flash drive over and over and over in his head; he could cite the old man’s journal entries word for word. He tried to piece together any memories he had between the Gas-n-Go and the Hotel Yorick but before he could give order to the disjointed images and sensations rattling around in his skull,
the car stopped, the locks popped up, and the door closest to Dylan swung open.